They hadn't made such a fuss over Dot Koller at Rockne Hall since her wedding day. But there she was again Thursday, 102 years old, happily reminiscing in the student-packed Allentown Central Catholic High School gymnasium where she and her late husband, Cornelius, exchanged vows in 1945.

"The organ player was playing 'Rock of Ages' because I was 32 when I got married," Koller said, looking back on what was the first — and, as far as anyone knows, the only — wedding in the history of Rockne Hall, a 1940 addition to the school on Fourth Street.

Koller, a resident of the Phoebe Home in Allentown for a decade, told her family some time ago that she would like to attend a Mass at Central again, the way she did when she was a student in the school's second graduating class in 1931.

School officials were happy to welcome her back and would have done so sooner, but the bad winter delayed the plan a couple of times. Thursday, though, was the Feast of the Ascension, a holy day when Catholics are obliged to go to Mass. And since Bishop John O. Barres was celebrating at the school, it seemed a suitable day for Koller's return. She is, after all, Central's oldest living graduate.

Barres, who played basketball at Princeton University and is an avid fan of the game, was excited to meet Koller because she played for Central's girls' team. That made her something of a pioneer, because basketball was only about 40 years old at the time and was mainly a boy's game.

Dorothy "Dot' Koller, the oldest alum of Central Catholic High School at 102, is recognized in a Mass celebrated by Bishop John Barres at the school on Thursday, May 14, 2015.

In those days, Koller's surname was Crout, and her nickname was "Speedy." I thought this referred to her athletic prowess, but she told me it had more to do with how skilled she was at shorthand in stenography class.

"I played basketball, but I didn't much like it," she said. "I wasn't the athletic type."

Still, she was feared on the court. She had — and still has — a keen sense of fashion, so her nails were always manicured.

"They would say 'Watch out for Dorothy! Watch out for her nails!' " she recalled.

Koller was one of five girls, all of whom graduated from Central.

"Every two years there was another one of us here," she said.

Her sisters have all passed on, but Dot keeps going. A decade ago, she almost died when she developed pneumonia after a fall, but bounced back.

And she was. She's always had a particular vitality. Her yearbook entry called her "bright-eyed, vivacious Dot," and opened with a couplet: "Eyes as brown as a berry/and a smile that makes everyone merry."

She still makes people merry. Last year, she celebrated her 101st birthday by going up in a hot air balloon.

"She's a go-getter, that's for sure," said her son, Chris.

"A fashionista, you could say, of her time," Victoria added. "She had mink earrings."

She was also a Scout leader — Chris is an Eagle Scout — and worked as an executive secretary at The Morning Call for 20 years, walking to work from her home on Allen Street.

Until she moved to the Phoebe Home, she had never been more than a short walk from her alma mater, and her face was bright as she looked around Rockne Hall. When Principal Dennis Nemes introduced her, the hundreds of students assembled for Mass applauded and cheered.

"It's a pleasure to be back," she told me. "I got a very, very high education here."